President Trump on Friday began his first trip since returning to the White House to storm-ravaged North Carolina and California, which is facing some of the most deadly and destructive blazes in the state’s history.
The trip comes as the president has left the question of additional disaster aid for California unsettled.
Mr. Trump is expected to make his first stop in Asheville, N.C., which had devastating flooding from Hurricane Helene last fall. The president then plans on traveling to the Los Angeles area, where he will observe the damage from wildfires that have killed more than two dozen people, destroyed entire neighborhoods and forced desperate evacuations.
But Mr. Trump has struck very different tones on the likelihood of additional federal aid for each state. While he has expressed support for North Carolina, Mr. Trump has criticized California’s Democratic leaders for the disaster response and threatened to withhold federal aid if they did not make changes to unrelated environmental policies in the state.
“It’s been a horrible thing the way that’s been allowed to fester, and we’re going to get it fixed up,” Mr. Trump told reporters of the previous administration’s disaster recovery effort. “North Carolina’s been treated very badly, so we’re stopping there.”
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For the Los Angeles stop, Mr. Trump said he wanted “to take a look at a fire that could have been put out if they let the water flow, but they didn’t let the water flow, and they still haven’t.”
“We’re going to have a very interesting time,” he said.
Presidents have typically visited areas recovering from natural disasters to show personal support and assure community members of federal aid for emergency medical workers and local leaders. Mr. Trump, however, has often used natural disasters as a vehicle to unleash political grievances, threatening to withhold money from political opponents, making false statements about disaster responses by Democrats and promising support for political allies.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, he told aides he wanted to stop money from reaching Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, claiming that the island’s leadership was corrupt. After wildfires erupted in California in 2018, Mr. Trump said on social media that he had ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “send no more money” unless the state changed its approach to forest management.
Before traveling on Friday, Mr. Trump had already displayed different approaches to California and Republican-led North Carolina.
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“We’re going to get that thing straightened out because they’re still suffering from a hurricane from months ago,” Mr. Trump said in a taped interview with Fox News that aired on Wednesday night.
Since the early days of the hurricane response, Mr. Trump has made a number of accusations about the Biden administration’s response to Hurricane Helene that were debunked by the local, state and federal authorities in the disaster areas.
The false statements included claims that FEMA had spent huge sums on housing for migrants and that it had told victims of the storms they would receive only $750. The string of false claims prompted President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to accuse Mr. Trump of spreading “outright lies.”
In the same interview with Fox News, Mr. Trump issued broadsides against Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor — whom the president has called “Newscum” — for his management. He also threatened to withhold disaster aid for wildfires unless the state changed environmental policies that he claimed had prevented enough water from going to Southern California.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” Mr. Trump added.
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State and fire experts have said those policies have no connection to the fires in the Los Angeles area.
During a news conference on Thursday, Mr. Newsom expressed confidence that the Trump administration would still reimburse California for the disaster-related funds. He added that he planned to be at the airport to greet Mr. Trump, even though he did not know whether he would be invited to accompany the president during his tour of the Los Angeles area.
While Mr. Newsom was left in the dark, Mr. Trump appeared to extend last-minute invitations to Senators Adam B. Schiff and Alex Padilla, Democrats of California, to join him in his visit to the state, days after calling Mr. Schiff “scum” on Inauguration Day.
A spokesperson for Mr. Schiff, with whom Mr. Trump has long had an acrimonious relationship, said on Thursday that the senator would not be able to make the trip because of expected Senate votes on cabinet nominees.
“Senator Schiff greatly appreciates the president’s visit to see the devastation of these wildfires firsthand and the invitation to accompany him,” the spokesperson said in a statement. The statement added that Mr. Schiff would work with Mr. Trump’s team and other officials “to ensure that California gets the aid and support it needs.”
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Mr. Padilla will also not join Mr. Trump because of the Senate vote schedule, his spokeswoman said, but he welcomed Mr. Trump’s support “for federal disaster aid to assist the thousands of families and businesses impacted by these devastating fires.”
Your investigation of these allegations is consistent with the IG’s mission to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies, and can help determine if politically connected crypto interests are undermining our national security. As Congress considers legislation on the market structure for digital assets, we must ensure that cryptocurrencies like USD1 are not providing the President and senior officials with the ability to line their pockets at the expense of the public interest.
The following facts have been reported in multiple outlets regarding Mr. Witkoff:
• Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach Witkoff is the CEO of World Liberty Financial (WLF), which the President’s family owns a majority stake in.³
• Beginning in January, one of Sheikh Tahnoon’s employees, Fiacc Larkin, joined WLF as the “chief strategic advisor” while continuing to work at G42, an AI investment firm owned by Sheikh Tahnoon that, according to the U.S. intelligence community, works closely with Chinese military companies.4
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On May 1, 2025, Zach Witkoff announced that MGX, a state-owned investment firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, had agreed to use a WLF-issued stablecoin, USD1, to make a $2 billion investment in Binance. As a result of this deal, WLF stands to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction fees from MGX, and more from the returns on any investments it makes with the $2 billion deposit.³
As of August, Mr. Witkoff maintained a financial interest in WLF and thus stands to personally benefit from his son’s business dealings with the UAE.6 Nevertheless, he did not recuse himself from deliberations regarding the UAE, which may violate federal ethics law.
The following facts have been reported about Mr. Sacks:
●
•
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He is a special government employee who continues to serve as a “general partner” at his venture capital fund, Craft Ventures.
8
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, an Emirati sovereign wealth fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, was an early investor in Craft Ventures and continues to hold an investment in the fund.
In addition, Craft Ventures is invested in BitGo, which has partnered with WLF to provide the technical infrastructure for USD1. If BitGo’s valuation grows, based on the UAE’s investment into USD1, Mr. Sacks and his firm stand to benefit.
3 Yahoo Finance, “Trump family reportedly has a 60% stake in the World Liberty Financial,” Anand Sinha, March 31, 2025,
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-family-reportedly-60-stake-172742661.html.
4 New York Times, “Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China,” Mark Mazzetti and Edward
Wong, Nov. 27, 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/11/27/us/politics/ai-us-uae-china-security-g42.html.
5 New York Times, “At a Dubai Conference, Trump’s Conflicts Take Center Stage,” David Yaffe-Bellany, May 1, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/trump-cryptocurrency-usd1-dubai-conference-
announcement.html.
6U.S Office of Government Ethics, Form 278e for Steven C. Witkoff, August 13, 2025, p. 23, https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/090d0de07e1d2fdf/bbf02867-full.pdf.
18 U.S.C. § 208.
8 White House, “Limited Waiver Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 208(b)(1) Regarding A.I. Assets,” June 2025,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/David-Sacks.pdf.
Nigel Farage has refused to criticise Donald Trump’s claims that paracetamol, sold in the US as Tylenol, could cause autism, insisting “science is never settled” and he would never “side with” medical experts.
The Reform UK leader said he had “no idea” if the US president was right to tell pregnant women to avoid taking acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol and paracetamol, and suggesting that those who could not “tough it out” should limit their intake.
Scientists and global health agencies including the World Health Organization have strongly dismissed Trump’s false claims, calling them misguided and saying the evidence linking paracetamol use in pregnancy and autism was “inconsistent”.
The UK’s health secretary, Wes Streeting, told the British public they should not “pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine”, adding: “I trust doctors over President Trump frankly, on this.”
But in a wide-ranging interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Farage was asked directly if Trump was right to share those unproven claims. He said: “I have no idea, I’ve no idea. You know we were told thalidomide was a very safe drug and it wasn’t. Who knows Nick, I don’t know.
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“He [Trump] has a particular thing about autism. I think because there’s been some in his family, he feels it very personally. I’ve no idea.”
When Farage was asked if he would side with medical experts who say it is dangerous to make the link, he added: “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. When it comes to science, I don’t side with anybody, right? You know? I don’t side with anybody, because science is never settled. We should remember that.”
Yet when challenged over whether it was irresponsible for Trump to make such an unproven claim, Farage said: “That’s an opinion he’s [Trump’s] got. It’s not one that I necessarily share.”
Farage’s refusal to condemn Trump’s claims comes weeks after a controversial doctor, Aseem Malhotra, was given top billing at Reform UK’s party conference and used his main-stage speech to claim the Covid vaccine caused cancer in the royal family. Malhotra is an adviser to Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy.
In the same interview, Farage said Trump was “right to say” that sharia law “is an issue in London”.
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“Never take what he [Trump] says literally, ever on anything. But always take everything he says seriously,” Farage said, adding: Trump “has a point.”
“So is he right to say that sharia is an issue in London? Yes. Is it an overwhelming issue at this stage? No. Has the mayor of London directly linked himself to it? No.”
Labour MPs have urged Keir Starmer to reprimand Trump’s administration after the US president falsely claimed in a speech to the United Nations: “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been changed, it’s been so changed.
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“Now they want to go to sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can’t do that.”
Trump has been publicly attacking the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, since 2015 when the Labour politician criticised Trump, the then presidential candidate, for suggesting that Muslims should be banned from travelling to the US.
A spokesperson for Khan said: “We are not going to dignify his appalling and bigoted comments with a response. London is the greatest city in the world, safer than major US cities and we’re delighted to welcome the record number of US citizens moving here.”
During the LBC phone-in, Farage also said Reform’s plan to ban anyone who was not a UK citizen from claiming benefits would not apply to Ukrainians and Hongkongers.
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“No, because they come for different reasons,” Farage said, adding those who had lived in the UK on indefinite leave to remain and had not worked or paid into the system would be told their benefits would be cut.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Alphabet’s market capitalisation surged above $3tn for the first time on Monday on the back of a sharp rally for the search giant’s shares over the past few weeks.
Shares in Google’s parent company have climbed more than 30 per cent to a record high of $252 since the group posted double-digit growth in revenue and profit in quarterly results out in late July.
The rally means Alphabet joins Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple as the only US companies valued above $3tn. Chipmaker Nvidia in July became the first company to hit a $4tn market value.
